Archive for January 2012

Every once in awhile, I jump on Google and try to catch up with the most current perspective on various topics I am tracking. Social media use in economic development is one of those topics. You can read my past posts on this subject by clicking HERE. This post provides you a number of select […]

One of the things I find fascinating is the tendency for economic development organizations to focus so much time and attention at creating a financial incentive package for potential capital investors and not spend hardly any time monitoring whether the project gets started on time or not. Yet, the cost of a delay can result […]

Unfortunately in the practice of economic development conflict seems inevitable. But, conflict doesn’t necessarily need to be divisive. If handled properly it can contribute to an even stronger outcome. One of the tools I was exposed to in my career is the Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument. The tool is a forced choice survey that assesses an […]

One of the impediments to successful completion of projects is the dreaded meeting. In economic development, it seems we can’t get anything done without having a meeting to vet both the business and political implications of ideas and actions. Entire days may fall into the black hole of back-to-back-to-back meetings. And the time it takes […]

People Do Not Realize The Importance Of Decisions Until They Make The Wrong One. One of the more important models I have been exposed to is the concept of proactively applying principles to guide decision-making, particularly your most important decisions. From an execution perspective, it is often not as easy as it sounds. But the […]

This weekend, the Wall Street Journal published an article titled “The New American Divide”. As I read it, I thought it was a great follow-up to my post on the American Dream. Recall, in that post I shared an overview of a very interesting market research study conducted by the Center For the Study of […]

A leader’s job is to look into the future and to see the place not as it is … but as it can become. Gap Analysis is an assessment tool to help a place (community, region, state) compare its current economic success with its future potential. The summary document prepared for a Gap Analysis also […]

It is only appropriate to revisit the status of the American Dream on Martin Luther King Jr. day. There is some surprisingly good market research on this subject. I want to present top line findings from a couple studies. From my vantage point, how Americans feel about the American Dream is one reasonable look at […]

This article was originally published by Biz Voice in 2007 as an article in their Expert Series. I thought it might be worth reprising and updating the article to reflect what I have learned in the four years following. Surprisingly, the tenets are pretty timeless and just as true today as when I originally authored them. […]

Throughout my career, I have had the opportunity to hire and work with consultants to get major projects successfully completed. My perspective on the value of consultants and what a good consultant looks like has been shaped from 35-years of being on the client side. Now, I am working to be a consultant and am […]